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Sit-Ins
Four black college students stage a sit-in at a oly white lunch counter in a Woolsworth in Greensboro, N,C. Sit-Ins soon follow in dozens of cities, raising national awareness of the civil rights movement. -
Period: to
60's Civil Right movement
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University of Mississippi
James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. -
March on Washington
250,000 people hear Martin Luther King Jr. give his "I Have a Dream" speech at a march for civil rights and to urge passage of the Civil Rights Act, introduced by President John F. Kennedy that summer. -
JFK Assasination
John F. Kennedy is assainated as his motarcade travels through downtown Dallas. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as president. -
Civil Rights Act
Congress passes the Civil RIghts Act, at Johnsons urging, outlawing segregation in public places. The next year, Congress passes the Voting RIghts Act, barring literacy tests and other dicrimnatory voting practises. -
Vietnam War
Johnson sends the first U.S. combat troops to Vietnam to defend Suth Vietnam from it's Communist North counterpart. American troop levels eventually reach 540,000. -
Watts Riots
Dangerous rioits break out in Watts, a porr and predominantly black section of Los Angeles, after the ppolice clash with residents over the arrest of a young motorist accused of erratic driving. Six days of rioting leaves 34 people dead, 1,000 injured, and hundreds of buisnesses destroyed. -
Summer of Love
100,000 young people gather in the haight-Ashbury neighborhood od SF to help themselves to free food and "free love." The hippie Movement and "love-ins" spread to Many cites like New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit. -
War Protests
Communists launch the Tet offensive, a coordinated series of attacks on south vietnam. Grisly TV images of U.S. troops in battle shake America's Confidence and boost the Anti-war sentiment. -
RFK for President
JFK's brother Robert F. Kennedy enters the campaign for the presidency on an anti-war, anti-poverty platform. Two weeks later, with his popularity plummeting, Johneson announces he won't run for re-election. -
President Nixon
RIchard M. Nixon a republican defeats Hubert H. Humphrey. Johnson's Vicepresident. The next year. Nixon begins a U.S. withdreal from Vietnam, it would not be complete until 1973. -
Men on the Moon
The world watches it all live on TV as U.S. astronauts land on the moon, fulfilling a 1961 pledge by President Kennedy and beating the Soviet Union in the "space race." -
Woodstock
Half a million people descend on tiny Bethet, N.Y., for a festical that is later seen as the peak of hippie counterculture and yputh movement.
